Brutal by Michael Harmon (2009)

I frowned. He should be yelling at me right now for saying those things. He should be telling me none of it was true and that I didn’t understand because I was a kid. Just like mom always did (p 21).

If Coffeehouse Angel was about the mundane middle, Brutal is about the long looser tail and their champion/critic Poe.

Poe’s mother has flown away to Africa to play the Hero Doctor role, sending Poe to live with a father she’s never met. David is exactly like Benders Hollow: sterile, boring, disconnected… at least at at first sight.

Soon, Poe is bucking authority at school and at home, calling them out for their hypocrisy, favoritism and anything else she takes issue with. While spats with the choir director and the PE uniform policy gets things rolling, it’s the tension between her new neighbor, Velvetta, and the school’s top jock Colby Morris. More accurately, it’s Colby’s bullying of Velvetta and the school’s incompetence at addressing it.

Poe and Theo, Poe’s romantic interest, have sharp tongues and quick wit, but will it be enough to change an institution?

Just as I am surprised when a female author completely captures a male perspective (J.K Rowling, Harry Potter), I was surprised that Michael nailed a female perspective, in first-person narration no less!

Poe is a fantastic character in the way of Frankie Landau-Banks. Their missions are the same: equality, or equal difference. Their success is left up to the reader to determine. Both make in roads, and Brutal wraps up with a pretty bow on it, but tradition is a hard thing to undo.

Ultimately, I loved it! Strong voice, strong characters, gripping plot. I highly recommend it. And it’s one of the few books on bullying I found I could tolerate.

Coffeehouse Angel by Suzanne Selfors (2009)

I didn’t throw it away. Why? For the same reasons that I make a wish before I blow out my birthday candles, and look into the sky for the first evening star, and pull extra hard on the wishbone. Because, deep inside, like a Scandinavian craving caffeine, I craved change. I had been living a quiet life in the mundane middle, hidden in my two friends’ shadows, but that wouldn’t work much longer. When they left Nordby to pursue their dreams, I’d become visible, exposed for what I was – nothing at all (p 52).

Coffeehouse Angel, like its narrator, is sweet with some unexpected strengths revealed through several missteps.

The story begins with Katrina noticing an apparently homeless teen sleeping in the alleyway behind the coffeehouse her grandmother owns. It’s the place where Katrina has always worked and how her classmates identify her – as Coffeehouse Girl.

But Malcolm is no ordinary vagabond. He’s a messenger angel, though Katrina is hard put to believe it. But through a series of mishaps as Malcolm attempts to grant Katrina her deepest desire as a reward for her unselfish generosity toward him, she begins to see the etherial truth.

Thrown into the mix are Vincent, Katrina’s best guy friend and swimming champion, and Elizabeth, artist extraordinaire. There is some romantic confusion surrounding Vincent and perhaps some jealousy regarding Elizabeth, and it takes Katrina some time and some self-deprecation to work through. But she does and the result is a girl realized, not a damsel in distress. Woo hoo!

SLJ described the adults as “often pliable, unrealistic, homophobic, or otherwise inappropriate” but welcome to small town America. This book is not without its charm, it’s highly readable, and without drugs, sex and violence, but still appropriate for the high school crowd. Definitely light chick-lit reading.

Read other reviews at: Confessions of a Book Addict and Karin’s Book Nook.

If you enjoy this book, I’d recommend:

No More Us for You by David Fernandez (2009)

The one-year anniversary of the death of my boyfriend was approaching and the events of that Monday afternoon were coming back to me, playing in my head like a movie (p 13).

Isabel is still dealing with the accidental death of her boyfriend, Gabriel, when she meets Vanessa, the new girl at school. Vanessa works at a contemporary art museum downtown where Carlos was recently hired as a guard. Through Vanessa, Carlos and Isabel meet… but will Vanessa be their undoing?

Told in alternating perspectives (Carlos and Isabel), this book is a rather hum drum story, touching on a variety of heavy topics like teen pregnancy, dating, cheating, drinking, death and grief. With the exception of grief, none were dealt with in much deapth.

There is a surprising twist in the late middle of the book that propeled me to the finish, but I probably wouldn’t have read this if I wasn’t assigned it as a Garden State Teen Book Award reader. Just not my type of read. However, I think it will stike a chord with a large number of (average or below-average reader) teens.

Funny How Things Change by Melissa Wyatt (2009)

On his arm – just above his left hand – were three black letters. He’s put them there himself when he was twelve, him and Jimmy, done with coal dust pounded in with a nail drove through with a stick. They never thought it would be permanent. But there is was, nearly five years on, his initials, R.A.W (p 3).

Remy Walker and Lisa Perkins live in sleepy Dwyer, West Virginia. Nestled among the Appalachian Mountains, Dwyer has little to boast of with a population dwindling now the local coal mining has dried up. Remy has spent the last couple years with Lisa. She is the magnet that directs his every move.

But as the summer after high school unfolds, Remy must decide if he will follow Lisa as she heads off to college in Pennsylvania or remain in Dwyer with his father in their trailer on Walker Mountain.

Complicating matters is a young artist come to town on a Federal grant to paint the local water tower. Dana is fresh and attractive and she makes no secret about her interest in Remy.

Funny How Things Change is a passable novel about first romance, career decisions, and coming to love and appreciate your home. Basically, the end of adolescence.

Wyatt does far too much telling and not enough showing at the outset. It is through Remy’s dialog (he is a bit witty), actions (picking Dana up for a joy ride), and his reactions (to Lisa) that we really learn who he is. Much of prose is dry in contrast to the lush mountain setting. I will take away a much better understanding of life in the mountainous regions of West Virginia and I appreciate the novel for that.

Remy was not an easy character to enjoy. He seemed rather lazy, like his father, and pathetic for wavering about Lisa while still maintaining he loved her. I don’t think he understands love at any point in the novel. Perhaps, because he only just begins to understand himself at the end, not coincidentally, when he decides to care about the mountain.

Soldier’s Secret: The Story of Deborah Sampson by Sheila Solomon Klass (2009)

In the black night I went, the moon and stars concealed by swollen, gray summer clouds. I was grateful for the shadows (p 84).

Soldier’s Secret is based on a real woman, Deborah Sampson, who cut off her locks and served as a boy in the Patriot army during the American Revolutionary War. In a time when women were expected to keep house and nothing more, Deborah, a “give-away child,” dared to form her own opinions, longed for equality and eventually, gathered the courage to act.

I found this a well-structured, well-written work that carries a strong and modern feminist message. Each scene accomplishes an important task in the overall story, the primary characters are well developed and Deborah is not only determined but she also has a great sense of humor.

Pair with:

Children of the Sea: Volume One by Daisuke Igarashi (2009)

As a young girl, Ruka sees a fish turn into light and disappear at the aquarium where her father works, but no one believes her. Years later, the mystery of the ghost of the sea unfolds before Ruka and a pair of mysterious young boys, Umi and Sora. Both boys were raised in the ocean by dugongs and can hear the same strange calls from the sea that Ruka does. After being suspended from her handball team, Ruka becomes caught up in the boys’ world, which seems to ease her feelings of loneliness (Publishers Weekly).

So, Booklist raves about this first installment of the manga series The Children of the Sea but I have to say, I thought it was a little weird. The art is beautiful and it was easy for me to follow, but it is clearly setting the stage for more action.

My manga loves are mostly in the shojo genre, while this falls into the supernatural mystery genre. The character of Sora seemed to be going for enigmatic and aloof, but I just wasn’t feeling it. The manga does have a Miyazaki feel but when the story tried to convince me that Sora and Umi were human, I couldn’t buy in. Perhaps it was that disturbing picture of Umi at the breast of a dugong… I read this for the Garden State Teen Book Award committee but I won’t be fighting for it. I hope someone who reads a lot more manga than me reads and reviews it.

Journey of Dreams: Fleeing for their Lives on a Perilous Path to Freedom by Marge Pellegrino (2009)

Our family does not talk about the helicopter that slashes the air like a machete. Instead, Papa strikes a match and lights the lamp. He takes on the voice of a storyteller and makes our fear vanish (p 7).

Tomasa lives in a small highland village in Guatemala, struggling to survive during the government’s ‘scorched earth’ campaign. First, mama and Carlos, Tomasa’s older brother, flee in the night after 14-year-old Carlos narrowly avoids being taken into the army. Then, caught between guerrillas and the military, Tomasa and her remaining family make the dangerous journey to freedom in the United States.

The journey is fraught with peril; helicopters chop up the sky, check  points threaten to undue all their progress, coyotes try to cheat them. All the while, Tomasa is missing her mother and brother, wondering if they will ever be reunited again.

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This is a solid middle grade book that brings the immigrant experience home. It is well told, giving the reader a glimpse at another culture, the horror of genocide, the danger of merely living in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the fathomless capacity for hope and courage. All without being overwhelming.

Alligator Bayou by Donna Jo Napoli (2009)

I jerk back at the word Mafia. Back in Italy the Mafia men used to offer boys money to knock over a fish cart or break a window. Little jobs-warnings before the Mafia men did something more drastic to ruin anybody who didn’t do things their way. Mamma said that’s how boys got corrupted into joining them-she told me to run when they came near. We’re nothing like the Mafia. How could anyone say that about us (p 9)?

Calogero is one of six Sicilians living together in a rural area of Lousiana in 1899. Skilled at working the earth, they sell vegetables, fruit and limoncello to whites and blacks. This irritates the white community, whose businesses are hurt by the Italian’s success.

Calo doesn’t understand what lynching means, but his family breaks bread with the Negroes while the whites bully him and Cirone, his young companion.

As the Italians befriend the blacks and whites (where possible), the big names around town begin to stir up trouble. Minor conflicts ensue, but with Italians and blacks around the country facing the mob’s noose, the Sicilians are caught between acting correctly and acting safely.

Meanwhile, Calo is falling in love with Patricia, a spirited black girl who laughs at Calo’s naïveté and teaches him much.

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This was an unexpectedly engrossing read! Unexpected because the cover was a bit of a turnoff. I didn’t know it was an immigrant story, an Italian one at that! (I’m third-generation Italian-American.) And I didn’t recognize the author, but I’ve since learned she is prolific.

The story grabbed me almost immediately. The tension was almost tangible. And the ending was like a sucker punch!

In the afterword, Napoli writes, “Bigotry pings the brain into numbness, it seems so inexplicable.” When reading about racism, sexism, I often ask myself, “How could this have actually happened?” Napoli answers that question by delivering feelings: pain, anger, remorse, fear. Wonderful writing.

I read this for the 2012 Garden State Teen Book Award ballot and I hope it makes it on.

Patterson Heights by Felicia Pride (2009)

I only really felt alive when I was around Natasha or when I was in bed listening for Rashid. In the rest of life, I wasn’t doing much more than the minimum–breathing, eating, bathing, going to the bathroom and hanging out with Ricky (p 150).

Avery Washington and his older brother Rashid are defying the odds. They stay smart, treat the ladies with respect and have the support of their two loving parents. It’s not easy, living on the East Side of Baltimore, but together, they are planning and saving for their future.

Then Rashid is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gunned down and dead before the ambulance gets him to a hospital, his death shakes the Washington family. Avery decides not to speak, his mother becomes obsessed with finding her son’s killer and his father just tries to make ends meet and keep the family afloat.

They move to the Country outside Baltimore but things don’t change. They only get worse. Avery tries to cope with his grief, his parents arguing and the burden of the knowing who killed his brother – a secret he keeps from his parents (and the police) to keep them same.

Trevor, Peety’s son, didn’t mean to shoot anyone. Peety, a drug lord, bought it for his ‘soldier’ son; an unwanted gift. But when his pride is challenged, Trevor acts stupidly in a hot moment. Rashid pays the price.

Then Avery meets Natasha in Straighten It Out, a program for teenagers struggling with grief, substance abuse, physical abuse, etc. She becomes the spark that begins his healing process.

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I don’t read a lot of urban lit, I never lived in an urban area (unless you count Syracuse… but I lived on the hill so I don’t count that), and my library is located in a suburb. So I don’t believe I’m qualified to judge the language or veracity of this text.

It is highly readable. It was selected as a 2010 ALA Quick Pick for Young Readers and that makes sense. The narration is informal and, while grammatically incorrect, more accurately reflects language as it is spoken.

It struck an emotional cord, though I had to familiarize myself with the vernacular (the use of words like ‘copped’ and ‘cats’ took some interpretation). I thought Avery’s family and their falling apart was well handled.

City Boy by Jan Michael (US 2009)

If you talked about a thing with power, that made it weaker (p 142).

City Boy begins with the burial of Sam’s amai - his mother. The Disease (AIDS) claimed both of his parents.  Now Sam must live with his Aunt Mercy in the village where his amai was raised. The problem is that Sam is a city boy.

Unused to dirt roads, barefoot children and sharing his possessions, Sam has difficulty adjusting to his new life. He is grieving for his parents, especially his recently deceased mother. Navigating the customs and myths presented by Aunt Mercy, her children and MacDonald (a foster child who butts heads with Sam immediately) proves almost overwhelming.

In tone, this book is reminiscent of Linda Sue Park’s A Single Shard. It felt too didactic for a young adult novel, but I admit to little tolerance for superstitious/religious/altruistic themes. While I assume it accurately represents the African culture depicted, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. Sam’s grief, however, came across strongly, adding to the veracity of his experience and keeping me interested.

From School Library Journal:

For young U.S. readers with only a hazy idea of life in this part of the world, this moving story will go a long way toward adding detail about both modern city life and the more traditional village ways.